Officials with the Audubon, as well as the Exira-EHK Community School Districts, are following Governor Kim Reynolds and the Iowa Dept. of Education recommendations, to remain closed through April 30th. Audubon Superintendent Eric Trager says parents and students are asked to “Please continue to check your email for schoolwork suggestions from teachers.” The administration says they “Are currently working on our plan for the Department of Ed to abide by their rules.”

Exira-EHK Superintendent Trevor Miller says “Exira-EHK teachers have been working hard to provide information for our students the past three weeks. Our administrative team will be meeting with the DLT team to discuss what continuous learning will look like for our students. Details about our plans will be released next week, with a target to begin online instruction for students PK-12 starting the week of April 13th. Stay tuned for more info in the next few days and STAY SAFE!”

Other districts are expected to announce in the coming days, their plans to follow the Governor and Iowa DOE recommendations.

(Radio Iowa) — Dozens of Iowa prison inmates are working to expand the state’s stockpiles of personal protective equipment and hand sanitizer. According to the Department of Corrections, about 75 men and women in state prisons are making thousands of fabric masks and gowns, with plans to expand to face shields. D-O-C spokesman Cord Overton says the inmates are working “virtually around the clock.” “We want to make sure we can take care of those that are actually producing these products and make sure that we have the products that we need for our own safety,” Overton says, “and then we’ll be shifting all of that supply to go out to the rest of the state of Iowa through state Homeland Security and Emergency Management.”

Once the department’s needs are met, supplies will go to the state stockpile, to be distributed to county emergency managers as needed. “And then the shipments all will be all going to the state stockpile, to be distributed across the state to those areas that need it, whether it be hospitals or first responders,” Overton says.

The inmates are being paid between a dollar and a dollar-25 an hour. Health care providers in Iowa are being directed to re-use P-P-E in certain cases, due to shortages.

(Reporting by Kate Payne, Iowa Public Radio)

FORT DODGE, Iowa (The Messenger) — One firefighter was injured and apartment residents were forced from their homes by a fire that heavily damaged one building and damaged an adjacent structure in downtown Fort Dodge. The fire at the two-story brick building was reported around 9:55 a.m. Thursday. The Messenger reports that fire crews soon determined that flames from that building were entering windows in the adjacent three-story structure with apartments, so they took hoses into both. The smaller building eventually was declared a total loss. Officials say the adjacent building was damaged but saved. The injured firefighter was treated at a hospital and released.

Cumberland & Massena Rescue along with Medivac Ambulance were dispatched this morning, to a single-vehicle accident with injuries. The incident at 680th and Lansing Road (About 1/2 way between Wiota & Cumberland), was reported at 6:49-a.m.  The female driver of a pickup complained of pain, after the vehicle she was driving slid off the road and hit an embankment. No other details were immediately available.

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A Kansas-based company intends to hire more than 150 new employees in West Des Moines as the state’s unemployment claims continue to soar from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. SelectQuote said Thursday it’s filling the positions as part of plan to add more than 1,000 more staffers across the company.

The company, based in Overland Park, Kansas, provides insurance price comparisons. Many of the positions are in insurance sales, and agents can work from home. SelectQuote is looking for new hires to begin as early as this month.

(Radio Iowa) — Iowa Workforce Development has seen more than 100-thousand unemployment claims in the last two weeks, but everyone who has been laid off or lost their job might not have filed. I-W-D deputy director, Ryan West, encourages anyone impacted by COVID-19 to file. “You don’t want to delay — you want to get that done now. You going to want to go to IowaWorkforce.gov, and get your claim on file…you just click on the individual tab, it’s real easy to navigate through,” West says.

West says employers pay into the unemployment fund quarterly, and that information is used to determine your eligibility. “They will submit to us the amount of wages their employees earned, and then we put the information into what we call a wage line for each individual,” West explains. “And so, if an individual ever has to file for unemployment, that information is automatically generated based on their social security number, and that will lay out what they are monetarily eligible for,” West says.

The federal CARES Act was recently passed that will allow more people to file for unemployment. West says they are not ready yet to pay that part out. He says they have to wait for guidance from the Department of Labor on how that will work and will start issuing that unemployment once they get that information. He suggests if you will fall under the CARES Act provisions that you should go ahead and file to get into the system. “If you are in that situation as a sole provider, self-employed, make sure you are filing your claim. Just get ahead and get your claim on file and then again you’ll want to continue to do your weekly claims,” West says.

He says they have been working to get everyone’s claims processed, and says there will be some delays, but they will work through it.